The Stark Realities of Baked-In Catastrophes

02 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Antarctic Ice Melt, Anthropogenic Climate Change, Arctic Sea Ice Melt, Capitalism, Climate Change Denial, CO2 Emissions, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Economic Hitman, Environmental Collapse, Intensified Hydrologic Cycle, Mangled Jet Stream, Noam Chomsky, Sea Level Rise, Sustainability, Techno-Fix, The Unsustainability of Mega-Cities, Warren Buffett

In a civilization gone mad with delusions of grandeur, we’re left with tatters of human sociability held together by rancid mythologies.

Despite human fossil fuel burning recently reported to be “flat”, CO2 levels have been on a tear for the last six months, reaching new worrying levels which have some wondering whether permafrost melt may be contributing to the unusually high spike if no decline happens soon. The giant holes in Siberia serve as an ominous sign. Considering that the current El Niño is contributing only 10% to what we are now seeing, runaway global warming may be accelerating worldwide. But don’t worry, Warren Buffett says climate change is no more of a problem than the Y2K bug and will be profitable through increased premiums and inflation.

Ever dire studies continue to reaffirm worst case scenarios, making clear to anyone paying attention that Earth in the next century will be unrecognizable from its current state. Basic planetary geography and atmospheric conditions will be altered through warming oceans and rising sea levels which are now increasing faster than at any time in the past 2800 years. On average, sea levels were between 50 and 82 feet higher the last time CO2 levels were at 400ppm. Glaciologist Jason Box expects ice melt from the West Antarctic to become the biggest contributor to sea level rise in the coming decades due to a feedback loop not in the climate models. CO2 levels have been increasing around 3ppm per year, a twentyfold increase since pre-industrial times when the highest recorded increase was 0.15 ppm per year. We’ve long since passed the tipping point of melting Arctic summer sea ice; 300-350 ppm of CO2 was the threshold for many parts of the climate. These changes are irreversible on a timescale of human civilizations. Even if all human industrial activity magically ceased today, the footprint man has already left will be felt for eons.

In our warming world, the hydrologic cycle is changing and creating extreme weather; crop-destroying droughts and floods are becoming more frequent. The Jet Stream is transforming into something different, becoming wavier with higher ridges and troughs prone to stagnating in the same region. As global temperatures rise over time, hotter air will be trapped under these layers of high pressure from a mangled Jet Stream, cooking everything to death. Rising winter temperatures are beginning to destroy the “winter chill” needed for many fruit and nut trees to properly blossom and produce maximally. Climate change is also disrupting flower pollination and pushing fish toward the North/South poles, robbing poorer countries at the equator of crucial food resources. In a new study, marine scientists are surprised to find a disturbing trend in the increasing numbers of a specific type of phytoplankton, coccolithophores, which have been “typically more abundant during Earth’s warm interglacial and high CO2 periods.”

Homo sapiens have only been on the planet for the equivalent of a few seconds in geologic time but have managed to overwhelm and foul up all of earth’s natural processes and interdependencies, leaving a distinct layer in the sedimentary record. There is nothing modern humans do that is truly sustainable. Here are a few glaring examples:

Techno-fixes are built into the IPCC’s projections for maintaining a habitable planet for humans.
Money megacities spend for adapting to climate change is linked more to protecting valuable capital than vulnerable people (Capitalism is doing an outstanding job of converting the planet into dead dollars.)
Nuclear Power: “Even if there were no issues like meltdown or waste proliferation, the cost and time for planning, permitting, and constructing nuclear plants is prohibitive. The Arctic ice will already be gone.
Japan prime minister: We came within a “paper-thin margin” of nuclear disaster and the evacuation of 50 million people in 2011
Germany’s carbon dioxide emissions increased by an estimated 10 million tonnes from 2014 to 2015, in a blow to the country’s claims to climate leadership.
New study published in the journal Environmental Pollution shows that urban soil can emit up to 72% as much CO2 as fossil fuels burned within a city and at a rate of up to twice that of rural soils.
90% of Indigenous in Brazil’s Amazon Suffer Mercury Poisoning: A new study shows that water and food sources for 19 Indigenous communities have been massively affected by illegal mining.
Satellite images suggest tropical forests from the Amazon to the Philippines are disappearing at a far more rapid pace than previously thought, a University of Maryland team of forest researchers say.
African elephants ‘killed faster than they are being born’
Desertification in China is a major problem for Beijing, as the country’s deserts are growing, threatening environmental, economic, and political stability.
The environment is now being destroyed by corporations in the name of green growth. Sham greenwashing projects are created, funded, and enforced by the IMF and World Bank.
Unknown continental-scale process is dumping phosphorus into streams and lakes across the U.S.
According to a new study, efforts to curtail world temps will almost surely fail: “A person living today uses about four times as much energy as a person did in the early 1900s.”
Greenpeace says China increasing coal-fired capacity: “There is a very rapid and accelerating net increase in coal-fired generating capacity”
UN envoy warns of environmental activist murder ‘epidemic’
Remember this headline from 2013?: Arctic methane release could cost economy $60 trillion -study. Our response was to go on a fracking binge which increased our methane emissions by some 30%.
While the resource intensity of GDP may be falling (less resources needed to produce 1$ worth of goods/services), the absolute decoupling of resource use, emissions, pollution, etc from GDP growth is the only thing that matters and that is not happening. If the world’s population continues to grow as projected and current lifestyles do not change, global resource consumption will increase anywhere from 2 to 5 times by 2050. It defies logic that a continually growing economy would be able to reduce its resource intensity down to near-zero to achieve a sustainable ecological footprint.
According to recent research, even if we converted 100% of farmland to reforestation projects it would only lower temperatures 0.45C by the end of the century. Converting half of global farmland to reforestation would result in just a 0.25C drop. Other recent studies have come to the same conclusion:

No amount of reafforestation or growing of new trees will ultimately off-set continuing CO2 emissions due to environmental constraints on plant growth and the large amounts of remaining fossil fuel reserves,” Mackey says. “Unfortunately there is no option but to cut fossil fuel emissions deeply as about a third of the CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 2 to 20 millennia.

Relying on machines for answers to the existential problems of a species run amok with planet-destroying tools and weaponry is rather ironic and tragic. We’re locked-up inside a complexity trap of our own making. The human propensity for tool-building coupled with our discovery of fossil fuels has created a set of living arrangements in which we are now enslaved to those machines and tools. The globalized capitalist economy externalizes its destruction and atrocities, keeping the masses in a state of ignorance and denial. Our corporate overlords are not conscientious citizens, but mindless organizations whose sole purpose is to grow profits no matter the external damage done to society and the environment. Between the economic oil hitmen who ensure that profits flow smoothly and GOP politicians who openly espouse their science illiteracy, a hospitable climate for future humans seems remote. Hopeful delusions have given way to the stark reality of our predicament as scholars like Noam Chomsky who originally started his career fighting for a modicum of social justice have now set the bar at just the chance of human survival. Despite the best efforts of scientists, environmentalists, and activists, the wealthy countries most able to do something won’t “get it” until famine, disease, and war come to their country. All is being left for the almighty ‘free market’ to sort out at the same time that climate change, a conflict multiplier, ramps up.

The sixth mass extinction gathers steam and climate inertia works to catch up to the catastrophic ecological collapse already baked-in. All the while, modern man engages in the spectacle of tribal politics(building walls, exuding military strength, recapturing past glories of their nation) and presidential candidates discuss the size of their penis.

For those who come to understand modern man’s predicament, it can either be the ultimate mind fuck or an epiphany that helps a person appreciate the fragility of life, the urgency of living in the here and now, and the grand cosmic joke of a global, hi-tech civilization that arose from the burning of ancient fossil remains only to have those fumes become a deadly curse, extinguishing any trace of our lofty accomplishments…

The fossil record, Plotnick points out, is much more durable than any human record.

“As humanity has evolved, our methods of recording information have become ever more ephemeral,” he said. “Clay tablets last longer than books. And who today can read an 8-inch floppy?” he shrugged. “If we put everything on electronic media, will those records exist in a million years? The fossils will.”
– Link

On the Supersonic Track to Extinction

15 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

≈ 113 Comments

Tags

Canfield Ocean, Capitalism, Chemical Pollution, CO2 Emissions, Extinction of Man, Geoengineering, Greenhouse Extinction, Greenhouse Gases, Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S), Industrial Civilization, Jevons Paradox, Keeling Curve, Lee R. Kump, Machine Fetishism, Mass Die Off, Mass Extinctions, Misanthropocene, Peter D. Ward, Ron Cobb, Under a Green Sky: Global Warming - the Mass Extinctions of the Past - and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future

Where is the “Misanthropocene” right now in relation to past extinction events? The chart below tells the tale. Notice that our current rise in GHG’s is essentially instantaneous in relation to past warmings which took place over thousands of years. As far as scientists can tell, the current warming from industrial civilization is the most rapid in geologic time. Ice core and marine sediment data in the paleoclimatology archive have revealed brief periods of rapid warming and there is no reason to believe modern man is immune to such catastrophic and abrupt climate events. In fact, we know that the Arctic is already warming twice as fast as anywhere else on the planet. Earth sensitivity to climate change is now thought to be possibly double that of previous estimates. An entirely different planet can result from just a slight change in temperature:

We’re about halfway towards the same CO2 levels as the Paleocene Thermal Extinction, but our speed of trajectory surpasses even that of the Permian Extinction:

In 2005, Lee R. Kump and fellow scientists published a paper describing what would become known as the Kump hypothesis, implicating hydrogen sulfide (H2S) as the primary culprit in past mass extinctions. According to OSHA, “a level of H2S gas at or above 100 ppm is immediately dangerous to life and health.” Prior to Kump’s study, the working theory had been that some sort of singular, cataclysmic event such as an asteroid strike was to blame for all mass die-offs, but Kump and colleagues proposed that a global warming-induced asphyxiation via hydrogen sulfide gas(H2S) was to blame for snuffing out life under the sea, on the land, and in the air. In past mass extinctions, volcanic eruptions and thawing methane hydrates created greenhouse-gas warmings that culminated in the release of poisonous gas from oxygen-depleted oceans. Humans with their fossil fuel-eating machines are unwittingly producing the same conditions today. The Kump hypothesis (elevated CO2 with lowering O2 levels) is now regarded as the most plausible explanation for the majority of mass extinctions in earth’s history:

Excerpt from Lights Out: How It All Ends

In the short term as both poles completely melt away and the Equator-to-Pole temperature gradient declines, the hydrologic cycle and storms will intensify, jet streams will be altered, global air circulation and ocean currents will be rearranged (especially in northern latitudes), and sea levels will rise. While some local winds will slow down, other areas may actually increase due to local temperature gradients becoming more influential than global ones. New research has indicated early warning signs of a collapse in ocean circulation. When that happens, the oceans ultimately turn into stagnant, anoxic pools belching deadly hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere.

As others have noted, our energy, transport and building infrastructure was not constructed to withstand a mutated planet blindly molded by over seven billion humans. For example, think of all those massive wind farms rendered useless by alterations in local wind patterns, hydro-power shut down due to devastating droughts, solar farms destroyed by large hail storms, etc.

Many are under the delusion that we’ll be able to turn this process around with “green energy” while ignoring that such technologies are derivatives of fossil fuel or that increased efficiencies will lower our carbon footprint while ignoring Jevons paradox. Countless other self-reinforcing feedbacks loops driving our socioeconomic system come into play as well such as rampant overpopulation (Overpopulation key driver of climate change, mass extinction), chemical pollution (“Every year, up to 400 million tonnes are produced and a thousand new substances concocted“), and capitalism’s inherent growth dynamics:

The monstrous capitalism we see today is the result of capitalism’s inherent growth dynamics. To give one modern-day example, the solar energy industry/movement began with the conception of local, i.e. decentralized, and roof-top solar electricity generation for local consumption. Today we see projects like Desertec (huge solar power plants in the Sahara that would supply 15% of Europe’s total electricity needs) and competition between European and Chinese solar panel producers for larger chunks of the world market. – Link

The destructive trend has been inexorably cumulative:

…the central trend is verifiable: mass die-offs are on the rise, increasing by one event per year for the last 70 years.

“While this might not seem like much, one additional mass mortality event per year over 70 years translates into a considerable increase in the number of these events being reported each year,” explained co-author Adam Siepielski, a biologist at the University of San Diego. “Going from one event to 70 each year is a substantial increase, especially given the increased magnitudes of mass mortality events for some of these organisms.” – Link

If we shed our anthropocentric blinders, the harsh reality is that nothing of substance is being done to prevent our own extinction, and after looking back at humanity’s track record for slowing down this beast of globalized industrial civilization even one iota, any sane and rational person would have to conclude that there are forces at work well beyond the control of any one group of people, any state, or even any one country. Humans have the dubious honor of being the earth’s first sentient beings to have thoroughly documented their own demise while arguing with each other over whose fault it is. And the longer the Keeling Curve stretches skyward, the greater the odds that we will pull the trigger on a geoengineering scheme to slow down the inevitable:

Do these experts—the top scholars and scientists researching the subject in the world—think we will see geoengineering in our lifetime?

“Let’s see it for ten years,” the emcee said. A few scientists cautiously raised their hands. Twenty and 30 years saw some more converts. When he called out “fifty years,” more than half the room had their hands up.

That, according to the experts, is a 50-50 shot that someone is going to try, this century, to engineer the Earth’s climate. To hack the planet. – Link

Techno-capitalist carbon man’s fetish with high-tech gadgetry has already gotten the best of him. Just look at us glued to our iphones, tv’s, internet, and sundry other social media tools. We’re addicted to and dependent on our technology, and the idea of pulling the power plug on this way of life is unthinkable, not to mention fatal, for those raised within its confines.

“In Earth’s history we see climate changes over time, and we know that some of these climate changes were associated with enormous biological destruction. How could we believe that the same sort of experience moving into the modern-day wouldn’t do the same thing?” ~ Dr. Peter D. Ward

Destroy the World

21 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

≈ 130 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment), Climate Change, Climate Change Denial, Climate Tipping Points, CO2 Emissions, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Extinction of Man, Fossil-Fuel Based Economy, Global Famine, Kathleen White (Distinguished Senior Fellow-in-Residence & Director), Mass Die Off, Mass Media Manipulation, Michael Ruppert, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, unwashed public

As mankind spirals towards its own self-manufactured demise, I look with a jaundiced eye at daily events in the news and at the bread-and-circus infotainment that fills the American hologram. The mass media is replete with misinformation on the state of the world, so I wasn’t too surprised by the recent words of wisdom(sarcasm) from Kathleen White (Distinguished Senior Fellow-in-Residence & Director, Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment); nevertheless, I felt compelled to set aside a partially completed essay on capitalism and technology in order to express some of my thoughts about White’s essay on the benefits of fossil fuels to humanity:

“…Fossils fuels also augment food supply. Fertilizer derived from natural gas has increased agricultural productivity by 40-60 percent. According to economist Indur Goklany, without fossil fuels, an area equivalent to U.S., Canada, and India combined would have to be converted into crop land to meet global food demand. Fossil fuel-based fertilizer, pesticides, and mechanized substitutes for animal power have saved vast natural ecosystems from conversion to cropland. And the increased atmospheric concentration of man-made CO2 has enhanced plant growth.”

[You fail to consider that without fossil fuels, mankind would not have been enabled to overpopulate the planet to such a degree as to require so much farmland. You also fail to say that the negatives of climate change swamp (no pun intended) any supposed benefits of a warming planet. As we are already seeing, the effects of epic droughts and floods are wreaking havoc on farmers. Good luck trying to move the agricultural industry northward where the soils are extremely poor. Famine and mass extinction are the inevitable outcome of industrial civilization’s destabilizing activities on the planet.]

“Although combustion of fossil fuels releases pollutants, that environmental damage can, and is, undergoing dramatic reversal far quicker than could the conversion of natural ecosystems to croplands. The prosperity supported by fossil fuel energy allows investment in effective technologies to reduce and eliminate harmful pollution.”

[CO2 and other GHG levels are increasing every year, having gone parabolic in the last 100 years. This reality paints a bleak picture for the future of humanity. Far from being mitigated, environmental damage is accelerating everywhere one looks from the acidification of the oceans to the die-off of forests and jungles. The simple fact is that renewable energy cannot replace fossil fuel based energy at the rate the world is consuming, as European actions have recently indicated. Only a wholesale reconfiguration of the economy and our way of life will enable solutions to the environmental crisis. Rather than taking this courageous and self-reflective approach, society is putting its proverbial head in the sand concerning climate change. The public already finds the subject of climate change difficult enough to understand without having to wade through a constant onslaught of misleading articles such as yours.]

“Renewable energy still provides a sliver of global demand. Despite the billions of dollars in subsidies, retail prices are still 2-3 times higher than fossil fuels. Renewable energy from wind and solar remain diffuse, intermittent and parasitic on fossil fuels for back-up. Nuclear fission provides energy comparable or superior to fossil fuels, but the public remains resistant to broad use.”

[Yes, capitalist industrial civilization cannot be run on renewables so that is why we need to be talking about powering down and living within the carrying capacity of the planet rather than maintaining the status quo. Nuclear has the little problem of making vast swaths of the planet uninhabitable from radiation contamination, as evidenced by such catastrophes as Chernobyl and Fukushima. Nuclear energy also leaves behind tons of radioactive waste that must be stored away for thousands of years. These sort of factors tend to scare the public. With global sea levels rising and storms becoming more destructive, the world’s nuclear plants, which are mostly situated along waterways and oceans for coolant purposes, are in jeopardy. Get it?]

“Energy-dense, abundant, imperishable, versatile, reliable, portable and affordable, fossil fuels provide 85 percent of the world’s energy because they are superior to the current alternatives. And hundreds of millions still await the benefits of affordable energy. Until energy sources comparable or superior to fossil fuels are fully available, policies to reduce emissions of CO2 should proceed with caution lest they prematurely jettison the well-springs of mankind’s greatest advance — the blessings of which literally light up the holiday season.”

[The “well-springs of mankind’s greatest advance” are soon to be jettisoned into the dustbin of history and extinction as we have already tripped multiple tipping points in the earth’s biosphere such as the Polar ice melt and many others. Hundreds of millions will never experience the energy-intensive lifestyles of developed countries since climate chaos will put a halt to human expansion within this century. Fossil fuels have allowed industrial civilization to far overshoot the environment; for the rest of the world to live like Americans, we would need more than 4 Earths.]

“For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.”

02 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 80 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Arctic Ice Melt, Canfield Ocean, Capitalism, Climate Change, CO2 Emissions, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Consumerism, Corporate State, Droughts and Fire in Australia, Ecocide, Ecological Overshoot, Economic Collapse, Economic Growth, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Financial Elite, Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Gary Bedford: Regional Environment Officer, Great Permian Extinction, Infinite Growth Paradigm, International Energy Agency (IEA), Jellyfish Plague, John Key: New Zealand Prime Minister, Kevin Moore, Mass Die Off, Methane Time Bomb, New Plymouth District Council (NPDC), Nuclear Radiation, Ocean Acidification, Overpopulation, Pathocracy, Peak Oil, Peak Water, Political Ponerology by Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Runaway Climate Change, The Elite 1%, Typhoon Haiyan

Despite mounting evidence of our grim reality, the world’s psychopathic leadership remains willfully deaf, dumb, and blind to the unfolding global ecocide and humanicide. A persistent sounding of the alarm by a tiny minority of the population only seems to have irritated and offended those in the elite class who are pressing the fossil-fueled industrial machine onward, full steam ahead. However, it’s not a cliff we are headed towards because surely the psychopaths would have hidden their parachutes underneath their business suits. There will be no Bottleneck for humans because we’re headed toward the black hole of extinction from which nobody gets out alive. Yes, they’ll be a few hangers-on for a brief period until there is only one lone straggler… and then darkness for the human species along with 99% of all other life. We’re doomed by a pathocracy:

…from Greek pathos, “feeling, pain, suffering”; and kratos, “rule”

A totalitarian form of government in which absolute political power is held by a psychopathic elite, and their effect on the people is such that the entire society is ruled and motivated by purely pathological values.

A pathocracy can take many forms and can insinuate itself covertly into any seemingly just system or ideology. As such it can masquerade under the guise of a democracy or theocracy as well as more openly oppressive regimes…

Kevin Moore, a frequent commenter on this site, has provided us with an excellent summation of current factors which clearly spell extinction for the “wise” ape. Certainly if a reasonable person in charge studies his list, they would want to turn this ill-fated ship around before it quite literally takes everyone down into a deep, watery grave. On the contrary, Kevin points out that they are “throwing the compass and fishing gear overboard” and “boring holes in the hull while distributing all the rations for immediate consumption.” I’m afraid those who have managed to work their way into political positions are forbidden from making any decisions jeopardizing business-as-usual; but as the memes go, there is no business on a dead planet nor is there a planet B. The least these politicians and corporate heads could do is be honest with their own children by telling them their future is not as important as the short-term profits to be had right now by ripping up the Earth’s last remaining resources and fouling the biosphere. If they cannot be truthful to their own offspring, how could we expect them to be forthright and unbiased with us?

At any rate and for posterity’s sake (however brief that may be), here is Kevin’s detailed and ‘hopium-free’ list:

Yesterday I sent out an email to a long list of people concerning the meeting I had with the local council’s climate change officer, during which I pointed out we are in the early stages of complete meltdown of planetary systems. And ‘nobody’ is at all bothered.

Here is what I sent as a summary of the meeting: .

I raised the following points with Colin Comber, New Plymouth District Council climate change officer, at our meeting on Friday, 29th November, 2013. On most points he had nothing to say.

1. The forcing factor for methane has been raised from 23 times CO2 to 34 times CO2. Even that multiplier understates the warming potential in the short term, and a figure of at least 100 times should be used for methane bursts.

2. Recent methane bursts in the East Siberian Sea have resulted in 2000ppb, which is equivalent to over 200ppm CO2 in the short-term, making the total global CO2 equivalence 600ppm (at least). The extraordinarily high concentration of greenhouse gases has resulted in rapid temperature increases in the Arctic (up around 1C since 2006, despite the huge amount of energy involved in melting ice.).

3. 2012 saw the lowest ever summer ice area.

4. The current Arctic ice area is hovering around two standard deviations below the historic average, but much of the ice is thin and new, making 2013 the lowest stable ice volume ever.

5. Atmospheric CO2 hit 400ppm earlier this year. It troughed at 393ppm (photosynthesis cycle) and is on its way up; it is anticipated to reach 403ppm April-May 2014.

6. The heat forcing of current atmospheric CO2 is equivalent to around 400,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs being exploded every day.

7. The present level of atmospheric CO2 is 40% above the pre-industrial level and corresponds to a sea level 23 meters above current; the reason we don’t have an immediate sea level rise is the thermal lag of warming deep oceans and converting ice into water. Such a level of CO2 has not been experienced any time in the evolution of humans over the past 2 million years. Indeed, for much of our recent history the CO2 level was around 180ppm and there were thick ice sheets as far south as central England.

8. The IEA has announced we are on track for a rise in average temperature of 3.5oC by 2035. Such a temperature rise puts temperatures beyond anything experienced in human history and most of the Earth into an uninhabitable zone. Interestingly, NZ governments quote the IEA as the best source of information when it comes to energy but completely ignore the IEA when it comes to unwelcome information about climate. The IEA is talking about a runaway greenhouse gas situation.

9. Acidification of the oceans [due to absorption of anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere] is proceeding at an unprecedented rate, leading to stress of organisms dependent on bicarbonate cycle for shell formation. Industrial activity is altering the chemical and biological composition of the oceans at a rate faster than that of the great Permian Extinction Event which wiped out 95% of life on Earth. Continuation on the current path of burning fossil fuels will render the oceans uninhabitable to most existing marine species, and then wipe out most terrestrial species.

10. I was personally shocked to see millions of jellyfish on a local beach recently. Although my observation has no scientific significance it is indicative of the ‘death of the oceans’ I have been reading about; we are transforming the oceans back to some primeval form, similar to that of 600 million years ago, wiping out the species (turtles, sunfish etc.) that feed on jellyfish and loading the oceans with toxins. I had previously noted the paucity of sea life in rock pools compared to 30 years ago (this is presumably not from over-collection, since the beach has been designated a maritime protection zone).

11. Whereas the previous five mass extinction events (other than the one that wiped out dinosaurs) were due to natural volcanic activity, the present mass extinction event is due to industrial activity and emissions from industrial activity.

12. An unknown amount of radiation is leaking from the crippled Fukushima reactors into the Pacific Ocean. People on the west coast of the US are now extremely concerned, particularly since mass deaths of sea life are now being frequently reported.

13. Australia recently reported the highest ever October temperatures (corresponding with the earliest severe wildfires).

14. Typhoon Haiyan was the biggest storm ever to make landfall and resulted in unprecedented damage. This was due to extraordinarily hot sea water associated with ocean warming. An excellent essay on Nature Bats Last highlighted the fact that prior to the Second World War people in the region lived without the ‘benefits’ of civilization, and when storms smashed things up they just picked up the pieces and rebuilt their huts, got water from lakes and rivers, and went back to fishing from small boats: now they are unable to do any of that because all the natural, sustainable systems have been ruined or covered with concrete and asphalt, and industrial civilization resulted in a population explosion that resulted in far more victims than there would have been if development had not occurred.

15. If we imagine the Earth totally covered with industrial civilization (no land available for food production) it is clearly not sustainable. 90% covered by civilization is not sustainable. Nor is 80%. Not even 50% is sustainable. The current level of civilization utilises about 43% of the primary production of the Earth and has resulted in a 0.85C rise in average temperature. That 0.85C rise is already having catastrophic effects (meltdown of the Arctic, super-storms etc.)

16. The fact that we already have meltdown (lowest Arctic ice, extraordinary storms, death of corals etc.) at 0.85C above the long-term average indicates that we are already in overshoot with respect to population and resource consumption. Despite the fact that we have reached the meltdown stage, governments persist with policies predicated on increased population and increased resource use, which is completely insane. NPDC [New Plymouth District Council] advocates the same kind of insanity on a daily basis.

17. The previously proposed ‘safe’ level of temperature rise of 2C is not safe at all, and was only ever an arbitrary number. But climate specialists now admit that warming cannot be restricted to 2C anyway, and that we are on track for a 4C or 6C rise in average temperature, i.e. a largely uninhabitable planet in a matter of decades, probably by 2060, which would be within the normal lifespan of children living today. If the International Energy Agency is correct, the Earth will be largely uninhabitable by 2040.

18. Nothing whatsoever is being done to curtail emissions. International negotiations are a farce predicated on ‘kicking the can down the road’ for as long as possible. NPDC policy, mirroring that around the world, is geared to increasing CO2 emissions, via increased population, increased use of concrete, increased dependence on internal combustion engines, etc. I quoted the incident I had witnessed of two petrol-powered vehicles being used to deposit and level gravel on a path in Pukekura Park when one person with a wheelbarrow could have done the job (and 50 years ago that was how the job was done); meanwhile, the mulching machine in operation in the park prior to our meeting would have consumed more energy in a few hours than the electric bikes the council promotes would save in a year.

19. Extraction of conventional oil peaked over 2005 to 2008, and the economic system is now being propped up by desperation measures centered around fracking, deep-sea drilling, extraction from tar sands, etc. as well as consuming ever greater amounts of energy, such activities increase the emissions associated with fossil fuel extraction, thereby exacerbating the climate catastrophe.

20. We cannot look to John Key* or Jonathan Young** or Andrew Little*** for leadership on environmental issues: they are simply opportunists acting as agents of global corporations and money-lenders; they implement policies favourable to global corporations and money-lenders which entail trashing the environment, generally as quickly as possible.

21. Currently, NPDC is fully committed to destroying the futures of the young people living in the district and elsewhere via resource depletion and environmental collapse, as indicated by the huge display in the council foyer which announces that NPDC spends 2c of every dollar collected promoting economic growth. (Economic growth equates to increased resource consumption and increased emissions.)

22. The present economy has no future because of energy depletion and because it is increasing the level of pollution, both locally and globally. Continuation on the present path of searching for and burning fossil fuels results in an uninhabitable planet within decades. Drastically reducing fuel consumption leading to total abandonment of fossil fuels is the only sane option. (It may be too late for that, but it is still the only sane option.)

23. This is not a matter of priorities. Surely there can be no priority higher than ensuring the next generation has a habitable planet to live on. The system ignores the most important priority of all, and therefore the system is INSANE.

24. Everyone within the system pretends nothing is wrong and that the system has a future even when a modicum of rational thought indicates it doesn’t (infinite growth on a finite planet is mathematically impossible.)

25. The composition of the new council give us no reason for optimism and many reasons for extreme pessimism.

26. The main reason the general populace of the district continues to ‘behave badly’ -purchase and use oversized vehicles, cover land with concrete and asphalt, consume at unsustainable levels etc.- is because they are encouraged to by NPDC. The only message they get from the council is that everything is rosy (when the reverse is the case and we are mightily close to collapse).

27. The overuse of internal combustion engines is causing severe health problems globally and within the district. Coupled with consumption of junk food, mechanized transport is causing obesity and other diseases. Consumerism is generating a freak society, and each week that passes the ‘freak show’ becomes more bizarre.

28. There is a culture of ‘spend, spend, spend’ amongst council officers, with utterly ridiculous projects being undertaken. Apart from being totally unnecessary, these concrete and steel projects put additional CO2 into the atmosphere and bring forward abrupt climate change and an uninhabitable planet, are financially crippling the district, and pushing those on low fixed incomes ‘off the cliff’.

29. I pointed out that I spoke with Gary Bedford, regional environment officer, prior to returning to NP in 2006, and raised the matters of Peak Oil and Abrupt Climate Change; he ‘did not want to know’ and has done nothing whatsoever to protect the district. Indeed, he is on record as making absurd statements such as: “Climate change will be good for Taranaki.” I wish to have a follow-up session with him.

30. I have been proven right on practically everything I said in 2006 and subsequently to variously composed councils since 2006. Council officers have been proven consistently wrong. But it makes no difference how often council officers are proven wrong, nothing in the system changes and the insanity continues.

31. NPDC has been provided with the most accurate data and analysis available over many years (particularly my submission to the draft plan 2013), and NPDC has ignored it all. Hence, everything that matters has gotten worse and will continue to get worse by the day.

32. As far as I can establish, Colin Comber is the only council officer in a position to challenge the nonsense churned out by the bulk of the administration, in so far as all the policies advocated by senior council officers result in increased emissions and an ever faster meltdown of the global and local environment. I pointed out to him that he has ‘sat on his hands’ since our first meeting (around 6 years ago) and everything has gotten worse as a consequence.

Notes:

*John Key: NZ Prime Minister.

**Jonathan Young: MP for the city

***Andrew Little: List Labour MP for the city (MMP system).

Andre Judd: recently elected (October 2013) mayor of the city.

What is particularly interesting for me is that Jonathan Young, Andrew Little and Andrew Judd all have copies of my most recent book ‘The Easy Way’ (which details most of what is discussed on CoIC and NBL etc.) and that I had several sessions with Andrew Little on the content of TEW, and numerous sessions with Andrew Judd prior to his election.

Old habits die hard, but if you’re a smoker and you’ve got stage 3 cancer staring you in the face, the only two options are to radically change your behavior or die with your bad habits. We’ve already destroyed the Earth’s air conditioner which has altered the Jet Streams, unlocked the methane monster, and set off various other positive feedback loops ushering in a new normal of extreme weather. As a result, humans no longer enjoy a stable climate within which to cultivate food and can no longer depend on feshwater supply from seasonal snow melt. Yes, it’s rather a bit too late, but why keep digging when the hole you are in is already way too deep?

The Silence of Extinction

22 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 59 Comments

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Arctic Amplification, Canfield Ocean, Capitalism, Climate Change, Climate Tipping Points, CO2 Emissions, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Dr. Mary Ellen Harte, Eco-Apocalypse, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Global Famine, Green Washing, James Lovelock, Mass Die Off, Methane, Nuclear Meltdown, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, Peak Water, Police State, Runaway Climate Change, Social Unrest, The Elite 1%, The Vanishing Face of Gaia

In a small way the plight of the British in 1940 resembles the state of the civilised world now. At that time we had had nearly a decade of the well-intentioned, but quite wrong belief that peace was all that mattered. The followers of the peace lobbies of the 1930s resembled the green lobbies now, their intentions were more than good, but wholly inappropriate for the war that was about to start.”

~ James Lovelock, The Vanishing face of Gaia
(quoted in ‘the end of more’)

Year 2013

In the early years of the twenty-first century, reports from the global scientific community started to take on a more dire tone as Arctic amplification melted the ice sheets and glaciers of the North Pole, deformed the jet stream, and altered oceanic currents. The Arctic treeline marched northward gaining footholds in land now unlocked from its frozen slumber. Animals, insects, viruses, and pathogens, which were driven by the warming planet to migrate northward, wreaked havoc on native species. Heatwaves also became more common in the lower latitudes where the bulk of humanity lived. Seasonal transitions became less gradual and more abrupt. Extremes of weather, flood and drought, started to occur more frequently and with greater destructive force. Perhaps the only business of Homo economicus to speak candidly about the reality of climate change was the insurance industry only because its business model could not hide or externalize the high costs of climate chaos. Humans had built their entire global civilization and profligate lifestyle upon the burning of rich, energy-dense fossil fuels. To change the course of this behemoth ship was well beyond the scope of any one nation or group of people. Talk of modern civilization running on so-called renewable energy ignored the fact that such alternative sources were only extenders of the faltering fossil fuel age, and such a transition was too late anyway. The seeds of our downfall had been sown over a century ago when man accepted the Faustian bargain of exploiting carbon-based energy whose power came with the price of a wrecked planet. The marketing ploys of “green” and “organic” were no fix for the unstoppable wave of eco-destruction unleashed by disaster capitalism. The leaders of all countries knew there was no politically viable way to stem the human population explosion which was also at the root of the ecological crisis.

We have become Vishnu and Shiva, the ancient Hindu gods of creation and destruction: As we create more of us, far more than we now understand the planet can sustain, we are creating our own destruction, both terrible and beautiful. Our scientists, exploring the frontiers of our knowledge of the world, have gathered enough data for us to understand that our consumption and proliferation have set in motion a planetary change in our relatively comfortable envelope of climate.

~ Mary Ellen Harte

Year 2047

In the last few decades the climate of the Earth had defied all the overly conservative, human-centric estimates that were designed to maintain the suicidal path of business-as-usual. Of course most scientists were shocked at the rapidity with which the climate had spiraled out of control. Nations which were the major producers of the world’s food soon halted exports in order to feed their own frightened and hungry populations and stave off revolt. Those countries heavily reliant on imports for their sustenance quickly devolved into anarchy and killing fields. Politicians were the first to be done away with, drawn and quartered with their heads placed on spikes. The thin veneer of civilization dissolved under the brutal reality of power outages, food riots, and climate chaos. Some countries with nuclear plants suffered Fukushima-like meltdowns due to the loss of their power grid while others, who were able to keep a lid on the disaster by maintaining electrical power under a state of marshal law, carried out accelerated decommissioning of their reactors. Nevertheless, with the collapse of the electric grid large swaths of the Earth were rendered uninhabitable by leaking radiation and toxic rain. The sudden downward spiral of civilization was also punctuated by the detonation of a few nuclear bombs in countries like Pakistan where arsenals had fallen into the hands of radical groups. In the eyes of the believers, Armageddon had finally arrived.

Year 2087

For hundreds of miles north and south of the equator a death zone of searing heat, barren land, dry riverbeds, and lifeless ocean encircled the Earth, but a few places at the poles still held small pockets of human communities who practiced subsistence farming and fishing as well as the art of scavenging technology from the past. Even though the rusted steal hulks of factories, cars, airliners, ships, and other relics of CO2-spewing industrialization now lay motionless in fields of tall grass or at the bottom of the ocean, the effects of the CO2/methane bomb unleashed by modern man would last for millennia. Sea level rise and the chaotic weather of the planet had displaced all the elaborate infrastructure that had been built to take advantage of once predictable growing seasons, fertile soils, and river systems. Gaia had pulled the rug out from under man leaving him scampering for cover like bugs from beneath an overturned rock, and there was nowhere to run. The few humans who presently eked out an existence at the poles were simply the flotsam and jetsam of the great collapse. The coddled elite who had actually planned for this eco-apocalypse committed suicide long ago when their stash of fine wine ran out and their gold had no value to anyone.

Year 2127

The sound of human voices no longer filled the air. As a matter of fact, the sound of any living thing had vanished. Nearly all the monuments of human achievement and ingenuity had crumbled away like sand castles before a rising tide. Only a few ancient relics still stood like the pyramids in Egypt and long segments of the Great Wall of China. Not much remained of the “disposable society” of modern times except for a few large construction projects such as Hoover Dam. Repossession on the humans was the only option Gaia had for a species that had built up mountains of environmental damage with no intention of ever changing its omnicidal ways. The slate had to be wiped clean before the slow, million year process of remediation could begin…

Vast, flat expanses of viscous ooze, unbroken by waves, covered all of what once were vibrant oceans. Great belches of toxic hydrogen sulfide would occasionally break the calm of these oily, purple-colored plains stretching far into the horizon. The deadness of the these poisonous waters was mirrored by the stillness on the land which now was exposed to the full forces of UV radiation through a destroyed ozone layer. High overhead, thin wisps of clouds slowly moved along a pale green sky. A fetid, noxious smell filled the air and the silence of extinction was everywhere.

Creating Hell on Earth

16 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 31 Comments

Tags

Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Antarctic Ice Melt, Arctic Ice Melt, Climate Change, CO2 Emissions, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Consumerism, Corporatocracy, Economic Collapse, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Financial Elite, Fracking, Frankenfood, Geoengineering, GMO, Mass Die Off, Materialism, Methane Time Bomb, Monsanto, Peak Oil, Poverty, Runaway Climate Change, Security and Surveillance State, Technophiliacs, The Elite 1%

The Arctic is melting, but it’s just an invitation to exploit it as the next hydrocarbon frontier. It’s a golden busine$$ opportunity with new shipping lanes, untapped oil/gas reserves, minerals, and fish. Hell, it’s even got potential as another tourist trap.
Drill it, frack it, dig it up, pump it out and burn it!

Gotta keep our six lane highways humming, our three-story malls and big-box stores bustling, our jumbo jets flying, and our semi trucks hauling.
Drill it, frack it, dig it up, pump it out and burn it!

Our food supply is failing from floods, droughts, and heat waves, but it’s the perfect open door for Mon$anto’s GMOs. A DNA tweak here and a genetic alteration there to our fossil fuel-dependent monoculture crops is all that is needed to withstand this strange new weather.
Drill it, frack it, dig it up, pump it out and burn it!

The forests are dying, biodiversity is disappearing, the oceans are acidifying and plasticizing, the fresh water aquifers are drying up, and the skies are simmering, but the show must go on, for the corporations know no other way. Business-as-usual must continue, even if it kills us.
Drill it, frack it, dig it up, pump it out and burn it!

The history of large-scale industrialization, whether capitalist or communist, has been marked by the mindset of ‘develop-first and clean-up later’ if at all. The costs of oil spills, nuclear meltdowns, dead zones, industrial GHG pollution, chemical contamination and countless other adverse effects of man’s activities are paid for collectively by the human race as well as every other living thing on the planet. The totality of all these environmental assaults has reached such a high degree that it has set into motion an escalating disruption and alteration of the Earth’s weather and seasonal patterns. Last year was a record for CO2 emissions; methane spikes have been recorded in the ongoing runaway climate change of the Arctic; and we now know that both poles are primarily melting from below by the warming oceans. What has been the response of this planet’s human inhabitants? …to sprint headlong toward the climate cliff. This kind of reaction to the unfolding eco-apocalypse can hardly be the sign of a wise being, but rather that of a fossil-fuel addict who cannot stop using, even in the face of death, i.e. near term extinction (NTE). Wisdom requires a broad and deep understanding of reality as well as acknowledgment of one’s limitations and humbleness of one’s capabilities. Industrial man exhibits neither of these traits, but instead thinks of himself as somehow outside the web of life and a Master over nature.

Radical change is unequivocally needed, and the alternative of business-as-usual, which we appear hellbent on following, is assuredly catastrophic and final. “But we have technology!”, they say. Technology cannot substitute for a stable climate or for the myriad of ecosystem services the Earth provides free of charge to the human economy. Sorry, but none of the geoengineering schemes proposed by man will bring back the melting glaciers and ice sheets nor stop the methane time bomb we have unwittingly released. We are talking about geologic processes which have been unleashed, far beyond the capability of humans to stop or control at this late stage. We’re sort of like ticks on a rampaging elephant. Nevertheless humans will try to sequester the carbon, sprinkle the atmosphere with reflective nanoparticles or aerosols, seed the ocean with iron, or any other of a number of schemes, but to no avail. I suppose the following 1990 statement by the U.N. Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases should have been taken more seriously:

Beyond 1 degree C may elicit rapid, unpredictable and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage.

In light of the sudden cancellation of the Halocene’s stable climate regime, I would say that the statement, “The American Way of Life is not negotiable!“, first uttered by George Bush Senior at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, is not only negotiable, but will soon be null and void. Yes the lifestyle of industrial civilization marked by mountains of disposable plastic bottles and wrappers, cheap crap shipped from Asia, and hours-long commutes from suburbia to corporate enslavement centers will inevitably fail as will all things propped up by hydrocarbon energy. What we took for convenience and progress was actually killing us, both physically and spiritually. The trappings of industrial civilization snuffed out the last connections we had with the real world so that people now think food comes from grocery stores, water comes from faucets, and climate control comes from a thermostat. As disconnected as we are, most never saw Mother Nature slowly pulling the plug on what Joe Bageant called “the theater state’s 400 million screens” of the “American Hologram.” Being released from the 24/7 American hologram would actually come as a welcome relief for most if not for the fact that the real world which they had been disassociated from for so long was rapidly deteriorating. In tandem with the collapse of the biosphere is America’s not so surreptitious slide into overt totalitarianism. You must have already figured out that a few well-heeled individuals are going to try to protect their opulent lifestyle as the rest of humanity turns to a diet of insects and rodents. Somebody’s got to pay the price for all those externalized costs and it’s going to be the unwashed masses – the climax of socialized losses and privatized gains.

And what about the children, if by some miracle a few do survive the ravages of climate chaos? Well, we can only hope that in the aftermath of their ancestor’s sociopathic behavior and lack of conscience, they will forgive us. Bequeathing a destroyed planet to one’s descendants most certainly earns such a person a seat in the innermost circle of Hell. But quite literally, Hell is what we are creating right here on Earth.

The Cognitive Dissonance of the Corporate State on Climate Change

17 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation

≈ 13 Comments

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Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Ai Weiwei, Amazon Deforestation, Arctic Ice Melt, Barack Obama, Capitalism, China's Massive Coal Consumption, Climate Change, Climate Refugees, Climate Tipping Points, CO2 Emissions, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Corporatocracy, Droughts and Fire in Australia, Ecological Overshoot, Economic Collapse, Economic Growth, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Financial Elite, Frankenstorms, Hurricane Sandy, Ian Bremmer - Eurasia Group President, Inverted Totalitarianism, Mass Die Off, Nouriel Roubini, Ocean Acidification, Regulatory Capture, Southwest Wild Fires, The Elite 1%

A video I made today which speaks for itself:

Tipping Points for Runaway Climate Change: West Antarctic Ice Sheet

28 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

A Perfect Circle, Arctic Ice Melt, Capitalism, Climate Change, Climate Chaos, Climate Feedback Loops, Climate Tipping Points, CO2 Emissions, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Faulty Climate Models, Global Famine, Greenland Ice Sheet Melt, Inverted Totalitarianism, James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Mass Die Off, Methane Time Bomb, Resource Wars, Runaway Climate Change, Sea Level Rise, West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melt, Zombification of the Planet

Amongst all the drama of the fiscal cliff, the story that should have gotten front page space this week is that the Antarctic is melting much faster than previously thought. In my post ‘Burning the Candle at Both Ends‘, the recent finding that the Antarctic was indeed losing ice came as a revelation to many and dispelled the popular belief amongst the global warming ‘denialist’ crowd that the South Pole ice sheet was increasing. The situation has now gotten more dire:

What are the ramification of this? We’ve released another ticking methane time bomb and opened up one more pandora’s box of known and unknown feedback loops:

…Half the West Antarctic ice sheet and a quarter of the East Antarctic sheet lie on pre-glacial sedimentary basins containing around 21,000bn tonnes of carbon, said the scientists, writing in the journal Nature.

British co-author Prof Jemma Wadham, from the University of Bristol, said: “This is an immense amount of organic carbon, more than 10 times the size of carbon stocks in northern permafrost regions.

“Our laboratory experiments tell us that these sub-ice environments are also biologically active, meaning that this organic carbon is probably being metabolised into carbon dioxide and methane gas by microbes.”

The amount of frozen and free methane gas beneath the ice sheets could amount to 4bn tonnes, the researchers estimate…

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 August 2012 13.00 EDT

And what will happen to coastal communities? If one were to perform a linear projection of sea level rise from recent records, then you would get the following results:

…Currently, sea level is rising at the rate of 3 mm each year. Given 1″ = 25 mm, this means by the end of the century a rise of 87 (yrs) x 3 mm / yr. = 261 mm or (261 mm/ 25 mm/in) = 10.44 inches – enough to wash away roughly one third of S. Florida and most of the sea level areas of the Atlantic coast…

But this year’s shocking display of rapid ice melt in the Arctic and Greenland, in addition to new findings of the Antarctic warming at twice the rate as was previously thought, should be enough to tell you that future trends involving systemic changes in the environment will most certainly be exponential in nature, not linear. In other words, such effects as sea level rise will be orders of magnitude greater than what has been predicted:

…IPCC (2007) suggested a most likely sea level rise of a few tens of centimeters by 2100. Several subsequent papers suggest that sea level rise of ~1 meter is likely by 2100. However, those studies, one way or another, include linearity assumptions, so 1 meter can certainly not be taken as an upper limit on sea level rise…

…Hansen (2005) argues that, if business-as-usual increase of greenhouse gases continue throughout this century, the climate forcing will be so large that non-linear ice sheet disintegration should be expected and multi- meter sea level rise not only possible but likely. Hansen (2007) suggests that the position reflected in IPCC documents may be influenced by a “scientific reticence”…

…Perceived authority in the case of ice sheets stems from ice sheet models used to simulate paleoclimate sea level change. However, paleoclimate ice sheet changes were initiated by weak climate forcings changing slowly over thousands of years, not by a forcing as large or rapid as human-made forcing this century. Moreover, in a paper submitted for publication (Hansen et al., 2013) we present evidence that even paleoclimate data do not support the degree of lethargy and hysteresis that exists in such ice sheet models…

…The increasing Greenland mass loss in Fig. 1 can be fit just as well by exponentially increasing annual mass loss, a behavior that Hansen (2005, 2007) argues could occur because of multiple amplifying feedbacks as an ice sheet begins to disintegrate. A 10-year doubling time would lead to 1 meter sea level rise by 2067 and 5 meters by 2090. The dates are 2045 and 2057 for 5-year doubling time and 2055 and 2071 for a 7-year doubling time.

However, exponential ice loss, if it occurs, would encounter negative (diminishing) feedbacks. Our simulations (Hansen and Sato, 2012) suggest that a strong negative feedback kicks in when sea level rise reaches meter-scale, as the ice-melt has a large cooling and freshening effect on the regional ocean. Such a slowdown in the rate of sea level rise would be little consolation to humanity, however, as the high latitude cooling would increase latitudinal temperature gradients, thus driving powerful cyclonic storms (Hansen, 2009), and coastlines would be continually moving landward for centuries.

West Antarctic ice is probably more vulnerable to rapid disintegration than Greenland ice, because the West Antarctic ice sheet rests mainly on bedrock below sea level (Hughes, 1972). The principal mechanism for mass loss from West Antarctica is warming of the ocean, melting of West Antarctic ice shelves, and thus increased flux from the ice sheet to the ocean.

The several analysis methods compared by Shepherd et al. (2012) concur that the West Antarctic ice sheet mass imbalance has grown since 2005 from an annual mass loss of 0-100 Gt ice to a recent annual mass loss of 100-200 Gt ice (Fig. 4 of Shepherd et al.)…

There are roughly seven billion humans on Earth at this time, all of whom have a death sentence hanging over their head via anthropomorphic climate change. Perhaps this partly explains the recent popularity of zombies and the ‘walking dead’ in our culture. Forthright thoughts on this subject from a scientist commenting at the Arctic Sea Ice Blog:

The first signs have appeared of what will be a mass culling of the human population by way of famine in the decades to come:

…According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome, global wheat production is expected to fall 5.2% in 2012 and yields from many other crops grown to feed animals could be 10% down on last year.

“Populations are growing but production is not keeping up with consumption. Prices for wheat have already risen 25% in 2012, maize 13% and dairy prices rose 7% just last month. Food reserves, held to provide a buffer against rising prices, are at a critical low level. It means that food supplies are tight across the board and there is very little room for unexpected events,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist with the FAO…

My youngest son, who is eight years old, shocked me last week with a certain question. I don’t talk about the subject matter of this blog to him for obvious reasons. He asked me whether in the future the world would become a sort of technological paradise or a destroyed planet. I couldn’t answer his question. I didn’t even want to try.